Computers or other executing devices are ubiquitous in today's society. They come in all different varieties and can be found in places such as automobiles, laptops or home personal computers, banks, personal digital assistants, cell phones, as well as many businesses. In addition, as computers become more commonplace and software becomes more complex, there is a need for the computing devices to perform faster and more reliably in smaller and smaller packages.
As the design of computing systems continues to increase in complexity in smaller and smaller packages, microelectronic system may undergo a process of electromigration. In general, electromigration is the gradual transport over time of material in a current carrying conductor due to momentum transfer between moving electrons and stationary ions. For example, in a VLSI microelectronic design due to the extremely small size of wires and huge current densities in those wires, electromigration may result in an open circuit (or loss of connection) or short circuit (as electromigration electrically connects two or more neighboring wires in the design). To provide a microelectronic design with a certain level of reliability, many VLSI designs will be put through an electromigration analysis during the design process. This electromigration analysis provides the designers with an estimate on how reliably the designed product will work under specified lifetime of the chip under specified target conditions and allows the designers to alter the design if needed to make it more robust and last its lifetime.
It is with these and other issues in mind that various aspects of the present disclosure were developed.